


Across the Darkness

by xpityx



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, No adultery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-08-08 23:38:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16439042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx/pseuds/xpityx
Summary: Obi-Wan knew they had hit the temple’s inner security measures when Anakin went from calm to clutching both Obi-Wan and his lightsaber between one step and the next.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I haven't seen any of the Clones Wars series and canon is so complex that there is only so much trawling through Wookieepedia I'm prepared to do. No rating yet cause I haven't written all of it... Knowing me, it'll either be 'mature' or 'explicit' eventually. ~~This is a WIP, so if anyone wants to wait until it's all written/up to read I won't be offended in the slightest.~~
> 
> Thanks as always to my babe [SlumberousTrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlumberousTrash) for the beta ❤ ❤

 

 

Obi-Wan knew they had hit the temple’s inner security measures when Anakin went from calm to clutching both Obi-Wan and his lightsaber between one step and the next.

 

They had been briefed on the security of the temple of course, including the fact that there was enough Mandalorian iron in the walls to greatly limit any Jedi’s access to the Force. However he had forgotten that Anakin’s in-Temple training had been somewhat foreshortened, and that he’d had less time training Force-blind than most Jedi.

 

Obi-Wan reached up and put his hand over Anakin’s where it was snarled into the front of his tunic. “Anakin,” he said, sending calm through their skin on skin contact.

 

Anakin seemed to shake himself, and Obi-Wan could see him make a visible effort to rein in his instinctual fear. Obi-Wan found he couldn’t blame him: he was tempted to reach out himself, just to confirm that Anakin was not a hallucination. To be able to see him but have no sense of him, no sense of their bond, was disconcerting to say the least.

 

Anakin nodded that he was ready to continue, but Obi-Wan noted that he stayed apace now, keeping Obi-Wan in sight as they made their way further into the tunnels.

 

Goros was a tiny, jungle-covered planet close to the Tion Cluster that was habitable only by dint of the massive terraforming that had been undertaken by some long-dead species. When Jedi had first come to the planet was lost to history, but a great temple had been built there about three thousand years ago, sometime after the Great Sith War. It had housed a repository of holocrons, mostly copies of those held on Coruscant for longer than Master Yoda could remember, but now even this forgotten corner of the galaxy was not safe.

 

The problem was that no-one could confirm that Dooku _didn’t_ know the many hiding places of the Jedi, leading to a retrieval operation of the kind not seen for a thousand years.

 

Obi-Wan and Anakin had found themselves with 24 hours between missions and had been duly sent to retrieve the data from the temple. Apparently no-one had been here for hundreds of years, and they had already had a few surprises where devices had misfired as they made their way towards the inner repositories.

 

Now that they had reached the highest level of security they should be close to the vaults. As far as Obi-Wan was concerned, they couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. They walked mostly in silence, Force-blindness weighing heavily on them. He had a feeling that Anakin was taking the brunt of it, but without the ability to sense their Master-Padawan bond it was impossible to tell. As younglings they had told each other horror stories about being cut off from the Force - usually as the result of some terrible accident - but it had only been the imaginings of overactive minds. As far as he was aware there was no permanent way to remove Force-sense from a Force-user, but he thought that it was something that he would be dreaming of for some time to come. He suppressed a shudder, and made sure to brush close to Anakin as the tunnels narrowed briefly.

 

They had left Captain Rex and a unit of troopers some way from the entrance, not sure how the ancient systems would have reacted to them. So far the security glitches had only resulted in a little bruising for Anakin: mostly to his pride.

 

After half an hour of walking they reached what appeared to be steps leading down to the vaults. They only had a partial map of the temple from the Jedi archives, but the structure from above had seemed to indicate that the innermost rooms were somewhere below them. Obi-Wan took a breath to advise caution just as Anakin stepped down lightly onto the first stair.

 

A solid gate fell from the arch of the tunnel, crashing into the floor between them so fast that it sent up a storm of dust and dirt, obscuring the torch Obi-Wan carried. He stared at the place where Anakin had been, too shocked at the absence of him to even call out his name. He was still Force-blind, but his senses were sharp enough that the low rumble that vibrated up through his boots led him to leap back just as the tunnel caved in, the noise tremendous in the sudden dark. He staggered out of his instinctual crouch, his mind reaching for Anakin, his dulled senses coming up with nothing.

 

“Anakin!” he called out, and again, “Anakin!”

 

His training held out in a small, still part of his mind, cataloguing his surroundings even through his panic: the sound of further cave-ins somewhere ahead of him; the pain in his hands as he scrabbled at the rocks that were now piled high into the shadows of the tunnel; the likelihood that his shouting would cause further rock falls.

 

Two minutes and twenty-two seconds after he had last seen Anakin, he sat on the floor of the tunnel, panting a little. He was sure he would be horrified at his loss of control later, but for the moment all he could think was that this is what it would feel like if Anakin were dead.

 

He gradually pulled himself back from the brink, tucking his fear away until he could deal with it later, until he saw his partner again.

 

That he could not feel Anakin in the Force meant nothing: he had not been able to sense him even when he’d been right in front of him, and it was likely that he would not be able to even when he left the tunnels, as the iron would block Anakin from him. Anakin was as fast, if not faster than Obi-Wan, and would have sensed the cave-in just as Obi-Wan had. He carried rations and water that would last him over a week. He would have to find another entrance and hope that Anakin… Obi-Wan bent forward over his clasped hands, breathing deeply despite the dust that still filled the air. Faintly, he could hear shales of rocks still falling somewhere deeper in the tunnels.

 

He made himself get up. That he could not sense the Force changed nothing, that he had given in to his fear changed nothing: he was Jedi. He considered and cast off a dozen plans in the time it took him to draw a breath. There was no other way into the central vault, not that had been on the plans he had seen, and not without the heavy machinery needed to enter from above. To attempt to do so would destabilise the structure further. Therefore he would need heavy construction droids in order to clear this section of tunnels safely. He could return to the _Vigilance_ , which was orbiting further within Republic space, but he did not wish to risk having to explain himself to the Council. Better to take a leaf from Anakin’s book and ask for forgiveness rather than permission. The relatively lawless Abuda-3 was the closest and easiest planet for him to reach, and no-one would twitch a tentacle at the _Twilight_. Decided, Obi-Wan folded himself into a meditation pose in the dirt. He could not leave without making one more attempt to contact Anakin, to let him know he was coming for him. But the Force was a distant light in the dark, no more reachable than the stars. He dug his fingers into the dirt and bared his teeth in frustration, but in the next moment he was calm again, rising and walking steadily away into the gloom of the tunnels.

 

==//==\\\==

 

The Jedi generally left Rex and Cody to decide among themselves who was to accompany them on single-unit missions. Rex was sure that General Kenobi thought that they had a system in place for such important strategic decisions, but they had long ago employed the ancient art of the credit flip. Cody had initially tried to argue for a cost/benefit analysis of their various skills in regard to the target outcome, but so far no-one in the GAR had been able to come up with any kind of measurable scale for having two Jedi Knights on one mission. Even if they did, Rex was pretty sure that General Skywalker wouldn’t fit anywhere on it. Hence the credit flip.

 

Regardless, both Generals had been pretty closed lipped about the specifics of this particular mission, and so far all they’d had to do was keep straight faces while Kenobi and Skywalker bickered about the best place to land and then stand around in the humidity. He’d had worse missions.

 

The fact that Master Windu had been patched through from the _Vigilance_ asking for an update was further evidence that this was a Jedi mission rather than a Republic one, but Rex was too experienced to be anything other than composed in the face of Jedi mysticism. He’d once seen General Skywalker walk into a cupboard having mistaken which door was the exit: it was difficult to maintain any level of awe after that.

 

He had a mixed unit with him, courtesy of the sheer number of injuries the 501st and the 212th had sustained on their last mission. A charge had misfired - a one in a billion failure - causing an explosion that had ended with six casualties and more than twenty injuries, including General Skywalker, who’d spent 24 hours in a bacta tank for a grade one burn on his leg. He’d still been walking on it, of course, right up to the point where General Kenobi had threatened to knock him out if he didn’t sit down. Rex had been considering doing something similar himself, but the difference was that Skywalker occasionally listened to the other Jedi when he would listen to no-one else. He used to listen to Commander Ashoka on occasion as well, but Rex had mostly come to terms with the fact that they wouldn’t be seeing her again. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

 

The medical frigate, the _Opal Star_ , that they’d ended up on had been one of the largest he’d even seen, dwarfing the cruiser they’d taken for this mission. He’d barely taken off his uniform when General Kenobi had come into the quarters the clones had taken over to tell them they needed to suit up again. It had been a scramble to get everyone in the cruiser on time, Fives cheerfully cursing out anyone who was too slow to respond to the order.

 

He was pulled out of his musings by the change of shift chime. He’d put shortened shifts into effect in deference to the poor sods stood outside in 100 degree heat and 90% humidity. He swung down from his bunk and into his boots, checking his weapons automatically. Making his way out into the wet heat, nodded to the shift leader as he took his place at the furthest edge of the boundary they were patrolling. General Skywalker had made it clear that they were only to follow the path the Jedi had taken if given explicit orders to do so, otherwise they were to stay within a 30 meter radius of the ship. Regardless, Rex had a clear view of the rough stone path that Skywalker and Kenobi had taken through the jungle, and he fell easily into a state of alert that he could maintain for hours if needed.

 

The thing about your entire platoon looking exactly the same was that you learnt pretty quickly to rely on other things to identify them at a glance. Cody, he could tell from the way he tilted his head when he spoke; Fives made an odd gesture just before he sat down; Kix walked with his feet turned in a little. A hundred tiny movements that gave his fellow clones the depth and individuality that a lot of people missed. Didn’t even try to look for, if he was honest.  

 

So when he saw General Kenobi in the distance, the first thing he noticed was that there was something odd about the way he was walking - almost like he was doing it against his will, like it was taking all his effort to put one foot in front of the other.

 

The second thing he noticed was that General Skywalker wasn’t with him.

 

“Look lively, lads,” he said into his comm, “we’ve got trouble.”

 

By the time the General was within shouting distance everything was stowed and they were ready to rendezvous with the _Opal Star_. The General strode straight past Rex who fell in behind him.

 

“Let Cody know I want the Twilight prepped - and tell him to be subtle about it. I will be heading to Abuda-3 the second we’re docked.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Rex replied, relaying the order to the _Viper_ ’s bridge to pass on.

 

He didn’t ask further, the General would either tell him or he wouldn’t, but he knew whatever they were doing know was the best thing that could be done for General Skywalker. Kenobi would never do anything but.

 

“The Jedi Council comm'd for an update an hour ago, sir.”

 

The General nodded, but made no move towards the communications array, or to the cockpit. Rex murmured into his comm for Fives to take them up.

 

“Better strap in, sir,” he said, once it was clear the General was not planning on moving from the outer corridor.

 

“Yes. Right you are, Captain.” And with that he abruptly turned down the corridor that led to his and General Skywalker’s bunks.

 

Well, that didn’t look good.

 

-

 

Padmé was worried. She was not prone to worry and she was half annoyed at herself for paying attention to the HoloNet’s no doubt inaccurate reports of Anakin’s latest mission and subsequent injury. Her husband was usually quick to send her a brief message when such reports surfaced, which she had previously thought of as sweet but unnecessary. Only last week she had emerged from a grueling four hour meeting with the First Secretary of the Outer Systems to discover a message on her private comm that simply said, “No, I have not joined the Separatists and yes, this is my real hair.” When she’d tracked down the story he was referring to she had snorted with laughter at the lurid reporting.

 

Yesterday morning she had awoken to the HoloNet showing a Jedi representative stating that Generals Kenobi and Skywalker were fit and well, and that reports of their deaths were simply not true. The story had sunk instantly, replaced by news of the Japrael system turning themselves over the the Separatists, and that a million credit shipment of Spice had been discovered just short of Coruscant airspace. Padmé had carried on with her day, but had become more and more concerned when she did not receive the expected message.

 

She touched her comm for the hundredth or so time that evening, aware of the troubled glance that Moteé sent her way. She steeled herself for the last hour of her weekly meeting with the Loyalist Committee, a task made easier by Orn’s lengthy digression into the importance of incorporating the philosophy of Briza Ashae into the operating procedure of the Committee. At least no-one was expecting her to contribute.

 

Once they had escaped the meeting she walked for a little while with Bail, before bidding him goodnight at the entrance to the turbo-lift that led up to her suite. Her security detail were quiet on the way up, but the moment she entered Moteé steered her towards the seating area instead of her rooms to change.

 

“Comm him,” she instructed, and then stood over her as she did exactly that.

 

Padmé shook her head, “the line’s dead.”

 

“Contact General Kenobi,” Moteé replied.

 

Padmé hesitated. Of course the only person who thought that their affair was a well-kept secret was Anakin himself, and to not even be able to get through to Ani to leave a message...

 

She put the comm through, listening to the tones as it crossed unimaginable distances.

 

“Senator, how may I be of service?” came Obi-Wan’s cultured tones. Instantly she was both relieved and embarrassed.

 

“Is this a bad time?” she asked, making it clear that this wasn’t a formal call.

 

“No, it’s fine Padmé, how can I help?”

 

“There was a disturbing report on the holovids regarding your last engagement and I just… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be contacting you. It’s just that there were reports of an explosion and Anakin isn’t answering his comm.”  She said the last in a rush of worry.

 

“It’s fine, Padmé. Yes, there was an explosion, the news outlets got that right for once. Anakin did receive quite severe burns to one of his legs, but there was a tank on standby so he is,” there was an almost infinitesimal pause. “He is well. I’m sure he’ll call you shortly.”

 

Which all sounded perfectly reasonable, except for the fact that Obi-Wan was lying to her. There were any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for him to do so, but her instincts told her that this was something outside the ordinary. She looked at Moteé who nodded firmly.

 

“May I transfer you to the holocomm?” she asked.

 

“Of course.”

 

And again: a definite hesitation before his reply.

 

Obi-Wan shimmered into existence in front of her, looking exhausted. His robes were streaked with dirt, and there was a thin line of blood at his temple.

 

“Obi-Wan,” Padmé said, alarmed.

 

He held up his hands to her in a gesture of calm, but his hands were in an even worse state: abraded and bloody. He seemed to realise his error and tucked them into the sleeves of his robes.

 

“We were…” He stopped, and Padmé waited, breathless with horror, “we were split up, and I am now gathering the necessary materials to retrieve him.”

 

“But he is alive: you can still sense him. He always knows when you are close by,” she said, almost accusing.

 

Obi-Wan looked, if possible, even more bleak. Padmé was aware she had made some sound and Moteé reached over to grip her hand in hers.

 

He seemed to realise the effect he’d had on her and pulled himself up a little straighter, looking more like the Jedi she knew.

 

“Padmé, listen to me, he is alive. This I promise you.”

 

She nodded, gathering her own bravery to her.

 

“Tell him,” she took a breath, “when you see him, tell him to answer his damned comm.”

 

Obi-Wan tried to smile at that, but the expression collapsed in on itself.

 

She nodded at him and cut the connection.

 

Padmé stared at the space where his image had been, then she distangeled her hand from Moteé’s and stood.

 

 

 

When she had married Anakin, Padmé had naively believed that she would be sharing her husband with the Jedi Order. Naboo had little in the way of relationship hierarchy or sex taboos, so the notion of her husband owing part of himself to another was not disturbing to her. However, she had quickly come to realise that she shared her husband with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Obi-Wan Kenobi alone. She had never been able to discern if he knew how deeply Anakin was devoted to him, but she knew enough of the Jedi Code to understand that such devotion was frowned upon at the very least.

 

She felt that she had Obi-Wan had been children together in a way, and that they had both suffered great loss on Naboo that had defined the adults that they became. However, as she had grown closer to Anakin she had viewed him through her husband’s eyes, and perhaps she had missed something important as a result.

 

Obi-Wan loved Anakin. Loved him in a way she had not thought him capable of. In a way, perhaps, that Anakin himself was unaware of. She was a little ashamed of herself for being pulled in by the ‘perfect Jedi’ persona fed to her via the HoloNet and even Anakin himself on occasion. The man she had just spoken to had been both desperate and desperately afraid. She had no doubt that he would not break his promise to her, that whatever had befallen Anakin was something that Obi-Wan would overcome.

 

Moteé had asked her if she would like to cancel all her non-essential meetings for the next day, but she couldn’t imagine having nothing to do but sit and wait for Anakin or Obi-Wan to contact her. She had said that she would rather work, so she had taken herself off to bed in the hope she would get some sleep. She couldn’t get the image of Obi-Wan’s injured hands out of her mind though: blood, dread and dirt.

 

That night she dreamt of Naboo funeral rites: sifting through ash for unburnt bones, dusting them with a brush made of her own hair. When she had cleaned them all she wrapped them in silk and passed them to Obi-Wan who sat beside her, austere and distant in his grief. Shmi was there, Ahsoka, Commander Rex, and a thousand faceless others. They each came forward and touched the silk wrapped bundle, until it was time to put it in the earth. Obi-Wan stepped forward, but instead of placing the bones into the grave he walked down into its shadows, and then Padmé was alone.

 

-

 

Wary of the temple security, Obi-Wan chose to go back in with just the droids for company, rather than risk the clones setting off another nasty surprise. They were slow, lumbering things, and Obi-Wan found himself checking his temper more than once as they made their way to where he had last seen Anakin.

 

Abuda-3 had been its usual chaotic self. Cody had insisted on accompanying him and, as a clone would have been about as welcome as a Jedi Knight, they had dressed in their best approximation of the Y’dooc: their faces and hair covered. Obi-Wan had somewhat ruined the subterfuge by not bothering to bargain for the droids, but hole in his psyche where Anakin should have been made all but the most necessary actions impossible.

 

He had not gone so far as to hide their actions from the _Vigilance_ , but he had not reported back to the Council. Perhaps before the war his behaviour would result in some kind of grounding within the Temple, but he imagined all he and Anakin could expect was a reprimand when they made it back to Coruscant. The war was taking enough of the Jedi’s resources that it would take more that going briefly AWOL for the Council to censor them more seriously.

 

He had spent the journey to Abuda-3 regretting his lack of discretion with Padmé. If she hadn’t had comm’d him so soon after Anakin had… so soon after, he might have made a better showing of himself. He imagined he would be suitably embarrassed over his emotional display once he had any mental capacity to do so.

 

He reached out to the Force, the echo of its strength dwindling rapidly as he and the droids moved further into the ruins of the temple. The journey seemed to take an age. The pounding footsteps of the droids stirring up clouds of dust that half obscured his light. Finally they reached the cave-in, the gate that separated this part of the tunnels with those of the inner vaults almost completely obscured by fallen rocks and silt. He set the droids to work and then moved further back out of the way to meditate.

 

It was rare that he was unable to touch the quiet centre of his being, but he hadn’t even tried since he had sat almost this exact same spot, some 24 hours before. He concentrated on his breathing instead, aiming to lose himself in the number of breaths. It was a simple exercise that he had vague memories of performing as a youngling: twenty of his peers sat in the warm light of the Temple training rooms, an elder Padawan counting gently for them.

 

He gave up after only five hundred breaths, and stood to watch the slow progress of the droids instead.

 

 

 

He left the construction droids on the other side of the gate and made his way carefully over the rubble on the other side. He was acutely aware of how often he reached for the Force to correct his balance or move a rock, only to have his own power meet nothing in return.

 

The tunnel curved a little and Obi-Wan blocked out the thought of Anakin’s broken body lying under the rubble he clambered over. There must have been an emergency power source still functioning somewhere, as low-level lights flickered along the foot of the tunnels, dust motes dancing in the air.

 

“Anakin?” He tried to keep his voice to a reasonable level, not wanting to cause any more rock slides.

 

“Anakin?” He tried again, a little louder.

 

“Here!” Came the reply, and Obi-Wan almost tripped in his rush to round the corner.

 

Anakin was sat on the floor, his face pale under streaks of dirt.

 

Obi-Wan went to his knees in front of him and grasped his flesh and blood hand in his own. Anakin clung back, his shoulders slumped in relief.

 

“What did you do, go back to Coruscant first?” he asked, with an attempt at a smirk.

 

Obi-Wan took a moment before he could find a suitable reply.

 

“Of course, I needed a proper bath and a change of clothes before I could even think of rescuing you.”

 

Anakin gave him a slow once-over, no doubt noting the fact he was in no better state than Anakin himself.

 

“I think you missed a spot, Master,” he said, making a lazy gesture that indicated the whole of Obi-Wan’s being.

 

Obi-Wan squeezed his hand, and Anakin squeezed back.

 

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

 

Anakin grimaced, “displaced break, I think.”

 

Obi-Wan looked to where he was pointing. Even without examining his leg, he could see that it was swollen.

 

“But, I got the holocrons,” he added.

 

Obi-Wan turned an incredulous stare onto Anakin, who shrugged.

 

“I got bored.”

 

“Do you think you can walk?” Obi-Wan asked, “There is a mediboard we can use if not.”

 

“With help, yeah,” Anakin replied, already trying to lever himself up despite the fact that his left hand was still entwined with Obi-Wan’s.

 

Obi-Wan reached forward and got an arm around him, and together they were able to get him on his feet. Anakin clutched at him once they were upright instead of pushing him away and insisting he was fine as he usually did. Obi-Wan pressed a brief hand to the back of his head, then they began to make their way back towards the gate, Obi-Wan supporting Anakin’s weight with every step.

 

“Have you put on weight?” he asked.

 

Anakin half snorted. “No, old man, you’re just out of shape without the Force to prop you up.”

 

“I can hear my report now, ‘sadly I had to leave the Jedi Knight, Anakin Skywalker, on Goros, but I have returned with the holocrons.’”

 

“I’m not sure how disappointed they’d be,” Anakin said, with sudden bitterness.

 

Obi-Wan nearly lost his footing as he turned to look at him, and they stood wavering - waiting for a breathless second to see if they would fall or not.

 

“That is not true, Anakin - both you and your skillset are incredibly valued within the Jedi.”

 

“To you, maybe,” he replied.

 

Obi-Wan looked away, not comfortable with exactly how much value he placed on Anakin being by his side, how it highlighted his failures as an example to his former Padawan.

 

“Come on, I’d like a wash and some tea sometime this century,” Anakin said, clearing the tension.

 

They continued their timid pace until they reached the place where the two construction droids were holding up the roof of the tunnel.

 

Anakin gave one of them a fond pat as they limped past.

 

“I didn’t know we had construction droids on the _Vigilance_ ,” he commented.

 

“We don’t,” Obi-Wan replied.

 

Anakin glanced at him, but didn’t add anything further.

 

The droids had been instructed to wait until they were out of the tunnel before following them - they were class C construction droids, so fully capable of digging themselves out even if the whole structure collapsed on top of them.

 

“Padmé comm’d me while you were trapped.”

 

“She comm’d _you_?” Anakin echoed.

 

“You might want to reassure her that you are well,” Obi-Wan advised, ignoring Anakin’s guilty start at her name.

 

“Er, yes. I’ll do that.”  

 

They were quiet then, expect for the occasional hiss of pain from Anakin. The tunnel floor was relatively even, and Obi-Wan found himself straining for the first touch of his Force-sense returning instead of watching his step.

 

Some ten minutes later the air seemed to lighten, and then Anakin was wholly formed beside him: hot and alive in the Force.

 

Anakin reacted more strongly, half stumbling so that Obi-Wan had to turn to catch him.

 

“What is it?” he urged, Anakin’s terror loud as their bond flared back to life.

  
“Sith!” Anakin gasped, “ _Sith._ ”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to remind everyone that I haven't seen the Clones Wars... So yeah, this is my best guess at some of the timelines

  
  


Obi-Wan was in front of Anakin with his lightsaber ignited faster than the naked eye could follow. Anakin could barely feel him through of the chaos of the Force, his senses stretched taught across the vastness of space.

 

He sat heavily on the floor behind Obi-Wan who flicked his eyes to him in concern.

 

“No, Master,” he forced out from between gritted teeth. “Not here, not now.”

 

Obi-Wan didn’t drop his position, but he turned a little of his attention in the Force towards where Anakin was sprawled behind him. Whatever he sensed was enough for him to deactivate his lightsaber and crouch down next to Anakin, though he kept the entrance to the tunnels in sight. 

 

“Where?” 

 

“I don’t know. I can feel him though, like a black hole, dragging the galaxy into ruin from his throne. He has unimaginable power and we are all just…” Anakin struggled for a moment to put into words the horror he felt, “we’re helpless.”

 

“How do you know this?”

 

Anakin shook his head, his frustration bright around him. “It’s like, I couldn’t see the darkness clearly because it surrounded us, it had become entwined so deeply in the Force that it was invisible. But after being able to sense nothing, I can feel the Force anew. And it is Dark, Obi-Wan. All I can sense is his darkness.”

 

“His?” Obi-Wan questioned.

 

Anakin nodded, shuddering a little. “I think so, though I can’t see him clearly. He’s controlling all this: the war, the chaos: a Sith, sat in its web.”

 

“Dooku?”

 

“No, he is merely another pawn. Someone much more powerful.” Anakin grit his teeth against the pain and stretched out his senses further, following the paths gouged into the Force as they led across the darkness of space.

 

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Obi-Wan warned. “Are we in danger now?” 

 

“No, no I don’t think so.”

 

“OK then, let’s get back to the ship. We’ve both spent enough time sitting in this dirt, I imagine.”

 

“When did  _ you _ sit on the floor?” Anakin asked, his surprise pulling his senses fully back into himself.

 

Obi-Wan ignored him in favour of hauling him upright. 

 

Anakin was unsteady, but with liberal help of the Force from both of them he was able to hobble along, leaning heavily on Obi-Wan. He couldn’t tell if was the pain or an effect of the Force-suppression, but he was uncomfortably aware that the bond between them had blown wide open so that he could almost catch Obi-Wan’s surface thoughts. 

 

“I’m sorry!” he blurted as they struggled a little over the uneven ground.

 

He could feel the flicker of confusion that went through Obi-Wan, followed by understanding, and confusingly, guilt. 

 

“No,” Obi-Wan replied. “I think I may be responsible for this one.”

 

“What? How?”

 

“Not being able to locate you in the Force was… difficult. Perhaps I am not shielding as I should.”  

 

“I don’t think I am either,” Anakin mumbled in the direction of his boots, not wanting to admit how a part of him craved this closeness, but acutely aware that Obi-Wan could most likely feel it anyway. 

 

“Actually, I rather missed having you close enough to annoy me,” Obi-Wan replied.

 

His light tone was belied by what he felt though the bond, and Anakin found himself tightening his hold around Obi-Wan in response. 

 

The second they stepped out into the light, Rex was there on his other side.

 

“Good to see you, General,” he said as he slung Anakin’s arm over his shoulder. He flicked a quick hand signal towards the rest of the unit and they fell into a defensive formation around the two Jedi.

 

“You too, Rex,” Anakin replied. “I hope you’ve been keeping Obi-Wan in line in my absence.”

 

“As much as possible, General.”

 

Obi-Wan was ignoring them, instead calling ahead to make sure that the medic, most likely Kix, was appraised of Anakin’s injuries. 

 

Sure enough, Kix and his assistant met them the ship entrance and Anakin managed to get to the medbay without anyone forcing him onto a mediboard, which he was taking as a victory. Obi-Wan stayed by his side through Kix’s poking and prodding, only briefly disappearing to answer a call from the Council. It was definitely a displaced break which meant he lost yet another pair of boots to injury as Kix cut them off him. The second in three days, in fact. He was not looking forward to explaining the requisition order for a new pair. Even with these thoughts and the pain of his leg, he was acutely aware of the darkness in the Force pulsing around him. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t been able to sense it before, to see the lines of vicious intent that were wrapped around the Jedi and their every action in this terrible war. He wanted to investigate further, to see if he could follow it back to its origin, but it would have to wait until he was out of the medbay at least. 

 

When Obi-Wan came back from his call Anakin could feel a high note of tension in him, but he spoke easily enough. They were heading back to the  _ Opal Star _ where Anakin would be able to have the surgery he would need. 

 

“And then?” he asked, eager for some distraction.

 

“And then we will going back to Coruscant.” 

 

Anakin blinked. “I might be grounded for a while my leg heals, but why have you been called back?” 

 

“I will need to explain myself to the Council,” Obi-Wan replied, cryptically. 

 

“Are you going to tell me why or do I need to guess?” 

 

Anakin caught a few vague images through the bond: falling rocks, a dusty market, the bulk of a construction droid. 

 

“The  _ Opal Star _ doesn’t have construction droids either, does it?” he asked, as Obi-Wan had apparently decided that if he pretended he hadn’t heard the other question then he wouldn’t have to answer it. 

 

“No.”

 

“Where did you go?”

 

“Abuda-3.”

 

“Did you tell the Council?”

 

“No.” 

 

Anakin winced as Kix chose that moment to do something painful to his leg.

 

“That should keep you from doing any more damage to the leg, General, but you won’t be walking on it I’m afraid. We’ll get you booked in for surgery as soon as we dock though. I’ll just go find you some crutches,” he added, seemingly unaware of the tense conversation he had interrupted. 

 

Once he was out of the door, Obi-Wan wrapped a hand around his wrist and Anakin sighed in relief. He could feel himself reaching out over and over to Obi-Wan in the Force, reassuring himself that he  _ could _ : it was at least some consolation that Obi-Wan was also looking for that same reassurance. 

 

Kix returned quickly and Obi-Wan stepped away as Kix presented a pair of the most battered crutches he’d ever seen. 

 

“Did you make those just now?” Anakin asked, slightly horrified. 

 

He got the edge of filthy look for that from the clone, which made him grin. 

 

He and Obi-Wan made their way carefully to the small berth they had been assigned, Obi-Wan taking them a slightly circuitous route.

 

“I thought you would prefer to avoid your unit for the time being,” Obi-Wan replied to his unasked question. Anakin tried to decide if he was pleased or annoyed that Obi-Wan was being so careful of his feelings.

 

Between them they were more than capable of coming up with reasons to share the same space for the evening and avoiding the reasons for them doing so. Anakin tried his best to improve on the frankly awful design of the crutches using the small tool set he always kept on him while Obi-Wan sat on the berth behind him, apparently reading battle reports.

 

At first, Anakin had found himself grinding his teeth in annoyance as the gummed workings of the crutches snagged his tools and resisted his mechanical skills. After some hour of getting more and more worked up, Obi-Wan lent forward and put and hand on his shoulder.

 

“I don’t suppose you want to talk about it yet, do you?”

 

Anakin closed his eyes and forced himself to let go of his anger, releasing it into the bright embrace of the Force. 

 

“No,” he replied, not caring if he meant the state of their bond or the glimpse of the Sith that he had seen. He felt Obi-Wan nod and withdraw back to his seat, but he moved so that one of his legs hung over the edge of the berth, warm against Anakin’s side. 

 

Anakin was both grateful for the comfort of the contact and resentful that it was even needed at all. They had both been hurt, Obi-Wan had even been presumed dead, but there was now something raw and needful about their bond, as if this latest near disaster was a step too far for the link that joined them. He  _ would _ talk to Obi-Wan about what he had seen in the Force, about the evil that crowded round them, but he just needed a little time first.

 

As it moved into the ship’s night, they finally put down their respective tasks to go to bed. Long years of sharing space had them moving around each other to perform their nightly routine with grace, despite Anakin’s injury.

 

He couldn’t sleep though, no matter how much he concentrated on emptying his mind. He hadn’t slept much in the tunnels, in more pain than he cared to admit, without access to the Force, without knowing if Obi-Wan had survived the rock fall that had injured him. He had turned over during the night to face Obi-Wan’s bunk, so he was aware when Obi-Wan got up and took the single stride over to Anakin’s bunk.

 

“Move up,” he demanded.

 

“What?” Anakin asked, stupidly. 

 

“You are blocking the bond somehow just as you are falling to sleep, panicking, and jolting awake. You have done it four times in the space of twenty minutes.”

 

“I’m sorry my discomfort is stopping you from sleeping,” Anakin snapped in an attempt to cover his humiliation. He hadn’t even noticed that’s what he was doing.

 

“I don't need you to be sorry Anakin,” Obi-Wan replied, completely ignoring his sarcasm, “I need you to  _ move up _ .”

 

Anakin threw himself to the far side of the narrow cot, resisting the urge to turn and face the wall as he did so. 

 

Obi-Wan slid into the space he’d left with an almost inaudible sigh. Through the Force Anakin could feel the ragged edge of his exhaustion. 

 

Anakin held himself tense for long minutes, expecting… not a joke, because Obi-Wan would never make fun of him for something like this, but the part of him that was forever a young slave remained on guard. It had been one of the first lessons he had learnt: never show weakness because it would be used against you. Maybe not at the time, but at some unknown, future date.

 

Obi-Wan reached across the scant inches that separated them and gripped his wrist, “I’m here, Anakin. Go to sleep.” 

 

Despite his determination to stay awake to spite Obi-Wan and his unnecessary mothering, he slept deeply, and for once he did not dream. 

  
  


==//==\\\==

  
  


Darth Sidious was ostensibly reading through the stack of flimsi that had appeared on his desk sometime in the ten minutes it had taken him to make himself some tea. He knew without looking that they would only be the most urgent of Senate business, his assistants having long ago been schooled in what was and was not necessary for him to read personally.

 

He was also waiting for a visit from Anakin, who had arrived at the Jedi Temple over two hours ago. He had heard the same rumours as everyone: that General Skywalker had died in an explosion; that he had been grievously injured and had lost a limb; that he had gone AWOL on a mission. As much as he was aware of the falsity of these rumours, he was looking forward to seeing the young man himself and being reassured that one of his main set pieces remained in place. 

 

Although another missing limb would be no bad thing for the boy, he mused. 

 

Just then a low chime sounded, indicating that his assistant was sending through a pre-approved guest. Anakin’s distinct Force signature announced his presence before he knocked on the door, although he seemed be have bought Obi-Wan Kenobi with him for some reason. However, when he entered, Anakin was alone. 

 

Sidious put the discrepancy out of his mind for the moment, concentrating on pulling the darkness of the Force close to himself, although he doubted Anakin would believe wrongdoing of him even if he caught him dancing on the pulverised remains of Yoda himself. 

 

“Anakin! My boy, what has this foul war done to you?” he asked, honeyed concern dripping from every syllable.

 

Anakin manoeuvred himself into the room and sat down with a sigh. The slim brace on his leg would escape most people’s notice, but he was pleased that Anakin was making no efforts to hide it from him. 

 

“Displaced break, nothing serious,” he replied with characteristic dismissiveness.

 

“I hope your Master remains unhurt,” Sidious said, hoping for some hint for the odd sense of Kenobi that his boy carried.

 

“Obi-Wan is fine, Supreme Chancellor,” Anakin replied, apparently pleased by the question.

 

“Good, good,” Sidious said, manoeuvring himself around his desk with studied ill-grace. “As much as I would not wish any injury on you, I would be glad to see a little more of you if you are to convalesce at the Temple?” 

 

“Yeah, looks like I will be grounded for at least two weeks,” Anakin stated, a hint of a Tatooine accent slipping into his words. Sidious winced internally, promising himself that it would be one of the first things he got rid of once the young Jedi was fully in his possession. 

 

“Well, I am sorry that you and your Master will be split up for that time. I know you enjoy working together.”

 

“Actually, Obi-Wan is grounded too,” Anakin replied, with a shiver of disquiet as if he had revealed something he shouldn’t have.

 

“Oh?” Sidious added, a tendril of suggestion to his voice. 

 

“Yes, he managed to convince the Council that I would do better with the company.” Anakin grinned - a look that no doubt got him in and out of a fair amount of trouble.

 

Sidious wasn’t sure why Anakin was lying to him, but he had always been surprisingly difficult to influence when it came to Kenobi. A shame the other Jedi was also at the Temple. Anakin was so much amenable to the more Sith-like emotions when his Master was off somewhere getting his clones killed. He would see to it though, if he became too much of a distraction.

 

“Well, I can’t imagine Master Kenobi has done anything to deserve being grounded - he really is an exemplary Jedi,” Sidious said, which caused the Force around Anakin to spike with a delightful mix of resentment and jealousy. “And you are a credit to him, of course,” Sidious added, with just enough of a pause to hit its mark.

 

Anakin was so beautiful when he suffered. Sometimes Sidious felt that he had built better than he knew, that Anakin would become more than he could ever imagine in the Dark Side of the Force. But at times like these, when he was nothing but the snivelling slave boy, desperate for acknowledgement, Sidious knew he had chosen well. The weakness of others was a strength, or so the old Sith maxim went. Debates had been raging for centuries over the primary meaning: was it that Sith were to use others’ weaknesses to their advantage, or if that which would be considered a weakness for most was in actual fact a strength for a Sith? 

 

Either way, Anakin’s weaknesses would be his greatest strength. The void within him that no love could fill would be overflowing with that which the Je di in their stupidity decreed forbidden. His fear, his mistrust, his loneliness, all would force him to constantly seek new heights to his power. 

 

They continued for a few more minutes along more innocuous paths of conversation, Sidious wanting to make sure Anakin was a little calmer before he returned him to the too-observant Kenobi. 

 

He put a hand on Anakin’s shoulder as he left, feeling the Force strain as he pulled it under his immense control. He had never worried overmuch about revealing himself in such a way, Anakin, for all his vaulted strength, was more of a hammer than a fine instrument. 

 

The Force shivered between them, the lines of influence that he had spent years wrapping around his young friend vibrating in acknowledgement of his nearness. Anakin hesitated at the door, something like confusion sharp around him, then he dipped into an ironic half-bow and strode out of the door. 

 

Sidious watched him go for a moment, aware of Anakin’s strangely dual Force signature retreating down the corridor. A puzzle, but one no doubt his boy would share with him in his own time. 

 

==//==\\\==

  
  


He had not lied to the Council, Obi-Wan told himself, he had merely shared a truth he would have otherwise kept to himself. Which, when one thought about it, meant that he had given a report that actually exceeded any of his previous efforts.  

 

It was the reasons for his actions which were somewhat less than virtuous. He had been right in that his brief foray into AWOL status was not enough to merit more than a disappointed look from Yoda’s holovid, and Mace’s much more immediate disapproval. It was necessary to add that his Master/Padawan Force bond was acting in ways that could be dangerous if not properly addressed. For the good of their partnership, in light of their unique place in the war effort et cetera, et cetera … Obi-Wan gave up on the tea he was making and sat down to meditate instead. 

 

He managed five minutes of failing to block out Anakin’s typically tumultuous emotions before there was a knock at the door, with a very familiar Force signature behind it.

 

He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if sneaking out the window was an option. They were only fifty stories up. He didn’t get time to do much more than consider it as a plan of action as his unwelcome guest let himself in - Obi-Wan wasn’t even going to ask how he knew the door code - and pushed the door to the living area open.

 

“Please go away,” Obi-Wan said in lieu of hello.

 

“Now, is that any way to greet one of your oldest friends?” Quin asked.

 

Obi-Wan gave him a dark look. He was pleased to see Quinlan, but he really did not want to have whatever conversation Quin had come to have.

 

“I hear you and your boy got into some trouble,” Quin said on cue, as he sat down opposite Obi-Wan in an undisciplined sprawl.

 

Obi-Wan unfolded himself from his meditative pose and went over to rescue his abandoned tea, making sure his footfalls were heavy enough to indicate his displeasure.

 

“We came out of our meeting with the Council under two hours ago, how could you possibly know anything about it?”

 

“I’ll have one if you’re making,” he replied, ignoring Obi-Wan’s question altogether.

 

Obi-Wan continued to make tea for himself, though Quin only looked amused when he sat back down opposite him with just his own cup. 

 

“What happened, Obi-Wan?” Quin asked, suddenly serious. 

 

“We were on a mission, there was an incident and I… I lost Anakin in the Force.”

 

“You thought he was dead?” Quin asked, sympathy soft between them.

 

“No!” Obi-Wan replied, horrified. “No, I didn’t think that.”

 

“Why not? If I lost sense of you in the Force that is what I would assume.”

 

“Because he  _ couldn’t _ be dead, Quin. I would never allow it.” 

 

He took a sip of his tea to avoid looking up to see his friend’s censure. He knew how wrong such a sentiment was, but if there was anyone in the Order who would understand it was Quin.

 

“Force, Obi-Wan.”

 

Obi-Wan nodded, aware of the magnitude of his transgressions, although there was no censure in Quin’s voice.  

 

“And now, what? Force-bond gone nuclear?”

 

Obi-Wan snorted, but without real humour. “Yes, that's a fair description. It is,” he licked his lips, “it is proving difficult to get back under control.”

 

Quin raised his eyebrows. “No wonder the Council are worried. If only you’d been born a couple of thousand years ago when the Jedi were less fussed about attachment and all that jazz.”

 

Obi-Wan frowned, to speak so casually of discredited branches of the Jedi Code was… well, it was disapproved of at the very least. Quin had never concerned himself with such issues though, and likely never would. 

 

“And this Sith?” Quin asked, obviously abandoning his other line of enquiry for the time being. 

 

It was Obi-Wan’s turn to be surprised. He and Anakin had had a short but tense meeting with the few members of the Council to discuss what Anakin had sensed the moment they had arrived back on Coruscant. It had been a closed door meeting, and one he could not imagine any member of the Council being pleased for anyone else to know the details of. 

 

“Being cut off from the Force increased Anakin’s sensitivity. He felt a Sith - a very powerful one - and perceived the effects of his influence on the war and the Jedi themselves. He believes we are being manipulated and that we are in great danger.”

 

“You believe him?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“And the Council?”

  
Obi-Wan swirled his tea and took a sip before replying. “They advised prudence. They were aware that there was a greater darkness than Dooku, but other than that they did not seem as… as moved to act as Anakin expected them to be.”

 

Quin nodded, thoughtfully, his dreads swinging with the movement. 

 

“It wouldn’t surprise me if your boy was right, but you can see that the Council are committed to this line of action, right?”

 

“I had hoped that we would be able to at least make them see that to blindly continue was to endanger us all.”

 

“Oh yeah, how did that go?”

 

Obi-Wan let a little of his fatigue leak into the Force. Quin gave him a sympathetic look before getting up to help himself to some tea.

 

“Anything I can do?” he asked whilst he searched the cupboards for something or other. Likely biscuits. 

 

“Keep an ear to ground. Don’t die. Don’t fall to the Dark Side again,” Obi-Wan listed, “you know: the usual.”

 

Quin snorted as he dropped down next to Obi-Wan, somehow managing not to spill any tea in the process. 

 

“You sure about this? I’ve never heard of Force-deprivation increasing sensitivity - certainly not the the extent that you’re suggesting.”

 

“Remind me,” Obi-Wan said, drily, “when was the last time you were in the Archives?” 

 

Quin flashed his quicksilver smile. “Possible effects of the more unusual methods of torture on a Force user are a pretty integral part of your training if you do the kind of work I do,” he said, with wry humour. 

 

“And?” Obi-Wan leant forward - he had not had time to properly search the Archives yet, but anything on what had caused Anakin’s intuition would perhaps help them to find the Sith that he had sensed. 

 

“And nothing - even before the Sith Wars the Jedi were not inclined to lock their own away to deepen their understanding of Force deprivation. Or, if they did, they didn’t write any of it down. It looks like you’re flying blind my friend.”

 

“Well, Anakin is famous for his flying.”   

 

Quin gave him a look that indicated the depth of his disdain for his sense of humour. 

 

“And where is the Golden Boy now?”

 

“Visiting friends.”

 

“You mean Senator Padmé Amidala”

 

Quin grinned at Obi-Wan’s look. 

 

“Actually, he has gone to see the Supreme Chancellor,” Obi-Wan informed him.

 

“He’s not kriffing him as well is he?” Quin asked, then laughed as Obi-Wan nearly snorted half his tea. They calmed down a little, leaning against each other companionably as they drained their cups.

 

“It’s going to get bad, isn’t it?” Quin asked, quietly.

 

“Yes, I believe it is.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: 26/01/19 I have not in any way abandoned this - I just underestimated how much moving countries (two, in the space of three months) would eat my brain. The final two chapters are sketched out and I'll be back before you know it - just wanted to give a heads up ^^ 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read, kudos'd, commented and rec'd so far!

When Anakin let himself into their shared apartment he could hear the shower in the next room. He took two steps into the sitting room and threw himself face-down onto the sofa, knowing that he probably had a while before Obi-Wan reappeared. If he concentrated hard, he could sense the heat and humidity that Obi-Wan was taking in with each breath. He felt Obi-Wan acknowledge his presence, wry and welcoming. Anakin retreated as best he was able to, annoyed with himself for invading Obi-Wan’s somewhat limited privacy. 

 

He’d spoken briefly to Padmé on the way back to his rooms, who had been called away to Iliria as a representative of the Loyalist Committee. She had been between meetings and had comm’d to let him know she was due to return in three days’ time. The Council had also wasted no time reassigning the 501st and the 212th, which Anakin was trying not to think about. They were his men that were out there dying, while he fretted about what had probably been a hallucination brought on by pain and impinged on Obi-Wan’s privacy. His sense of the Sith was already starting to fade and like a child’s nightmare he only half-believed what he’d seen. The disbelief of the Council further coloured his recollection with doubt. Obi-Wan had remained steadfast, of course. He had seen Anakin’s terror, shared his initial conviction. Anakin had almost felt an echo of that same dark power earlier, although he was half convinced he was jumping at shadows. 

 

The bond, though. That was decidedly not settling. It was like it had a mind of its own and now the Council knew he could feel not only their disapproval, but how said disapproval affected Obi-Wan. Part of their punishment was a non-negotiable meeting with one of the Consulars, of which Anakin’s was scheduled for two days’ time. He had been displeased, to say the least, when Obi-Wan had shared their difficulties; but Obi-Wan was Obi-Wan, dutiful to the last. 

 

Anakin was uncomfortable at being the cause of any tension between Obi-Wan and the Council: he had done enough of that when he was a Padawan. As always when he was back at the Temple, he felt pulled in two directions. One was to be here, in this place where he had become Anakin Skywalker - free from slavery and a Jedi - on  Coruscant  where had at least some chance of seeing Padmé; and the other was the desire to be as far away as kriffing possible from the impossible ideal he was supposed to live up to: the chosen one, the hero without fear… a good Jedi. 

 

A soothing glow of calm seemed to grow around him, suffusing the Force with its low light. Obi-Wan, sensing Anakin’s disquiet and soothing him through their bond. It had been something he’d done when Anakin had been very young, but there had been no need since then. Or, rather, Anakin still had plenty of need for some calm, but his shields had always been good enough that he’d been able to hide his turmoil somewhat. 

 

Obi-Wan himself came into the room then, dressed in soft house robes and carrying an ever-present cup of root tea. He settled on the floor with his back to the sofa, as Anakin was still lying across the length of it. Anakin wondered if he’d be able to get away with getting up and retreating to his room, but instead rolled over onto his back, like the responsible adult he was, so that Obi-Wan could tell him to meditate more or something in that vein. 

 

“I can feel you brooding from the next room, by the way,” Obi-wan said, delicately sipping his tea. Anakin would bet his lightsaber that Obi-Wan had bought a coaster with him to put his teacup down on. 

 

“I felt it again today.”

 

“The Sith?” Obi-Wan asked, his attention sharp in the Force.

 

“No, just… darkness. Intent.”

 

“I thought you’d begun to doubt what you had seen on Goros?” Obi-wan asked, no judgement in the question. 

 

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” Anakin replied, willing himself to leave it at that. “It’s this place!” he exclaimed, sitting up in his agitation. “I always doubt myself here.”

 

“I don’t,” Obi-Wan said. 

 

“No?” Anakin could feel his own bitterness, and was powerless to prevent Obi-Wan from feeling it as well. 

 

“Never,” Obi-Wan said, putting his cup down and moving to sit behind Anakin. He put a hand on Anakin’s chest and guided him back until he was leaning half in Obi-Wan’s lap, half on a cushion that had appeared from somewhere. Anakin remained tense for a long moment before he gave up and allowed himself to enjoy the contact. He was dreading when Obi-Wan decided that he need to go back to being a good Jedi and would leave Anakin alone to his undisciplined attachment. 

 

“Anakin”, Obi-Wan started and Anakin tensed up. When Obi-Wan put his name at the end of a sentence that was fine, but when he started a sentence with his name that usually meant trouble. “You know that I have always respected your privacy — what you do in your own time is your business, I know that — but circumstances being what they are, it has come to my attention that there is something bothering you. No, that is not right - there is something  _ eating away _ at you, some burden, or burdens, you seem determined to carry alone. And I want you to know that you don’t have to, that there is nothing you could do or say that would make me —”

 

“I have to go,” Anakin said, pushing away from Obi-Wan abruptly and rolling gracefully to his feet. It was pointless even trying to shield from Obi-Wan, so he didn’t even make an attempt, he just left the apartment, intent on putting physical distance between them even when emotional distance was manifestly impossible. 

 

He walked fast, forcing himself to think only of the blackness of hyperspace, engines humming under his hands. After thirty minutes or so he came to the otherside of the Temple, where he technically had his own rooms. Under normal circumstances someone would have gently suggested he either take his name off the room in the register or start sleeping there, but the war had whittled away at Jedi numbers to such an extent that he could have taken a suite to himself and no-one would have commented. 

 

It was cold inside, with that sense that was half smell, half Force that told him that no-one had been in there for some time. It would do though, just until Obi-Wan saw that his line of enquiry was one best left undisturbed and they added it to the list of things they never, ever discussed. 

 

To say that he slept badly that night was somewhat of an understatement. By the second day of no sleep his eyes were gritty and shapes floated at the edges of his vision. He either had screaming nightmares or jolted awake, sure that he was cut off from Obi-Wan once again. 

 

By the time his appointment with the Consular rolled around, he no longer had the wherewithal to think of an excuse not to go, so he made his way to the Halls of Healing, nodding at acquaintances as he did so but walking quickly enough that he would not be stopped to chat. 

 

He was aware that he had no grounds on which to call anyone on their attitude issues, but the Healer who called him into one of the smaller meeting rooms gave off the tense air of extreme irritability. She did nothing to alleviate the impression: gesturing for him to sit opposite her on the floor without a word before folding herself into a painful looking meditative pose and closing her eyes. 

 

Finally, just when Anakin was wondering how much trouble he’d be in if he asked for a bathroom break, she shook herself free of her meditation. 

 

“Your capabilities in the Force are undiminished,” she pronounced.

 

“What does  _ that _ mean?” Anakin asked. 

 

The Healer gave him an unimpressed look which Anakin privately thought was the only kind of look she had. 

 

“It means that you are perfectly capable of controlling the flow of the Master-Padawan bond, the simple fact that you don’t want to close it off is the only thing preventing you from doing so.”

 

Anakin swallowed, but there didn’t seem to be any censure in her voice.

 

“So no lecture about attachment?” he asked, half joking.  

 

She gave him another of her looks.

 

“I’m a Healer. Do you really think I would put the Code above your health?”

 

Anakin thought all Jedi put the Code above everything, but he wasn’t about to say that. 

 

“Er, no?” he tried.

 

She didn’t look any more pleased. 

 

“No, Healer Navkin,” he added. 

 

“Was there anything else?” she asked, when he still hesitated.

 

It was exhaustion that let him say what he normally would have not even let form into a whole thought. “I think, I think there’s something wrong with me.”

 

“And what makes you say that?”

 

“I want too much, I… become attached and I know I’m not supposed to, but no one ever told me  _ how. _ ”

 

“And you think this is a failing?”

 

“Yes, of course. It’s in the code,” he added, in case she hadn’t read it, which he was starting to think was highly likely. 

 

“Let me tell you a story,” she said, as she folded herself into a more relaxed pose. “When I was a Padawan I and my Master were stationed on Hular. There had been a civil war raging there for nearly a decade and we had been sent firstly as neutral parties to investigate charges of genocide, and secondly as healers. It was in the second role that I had been left, while my Master left to play the first. While I tended to the rows of injuries and dying, an opposition fighter came in and began to shoot dead my patients, one after the other. “

 

“What did you do?” Anakin asked, horrified. 

 

“I threw the scalpel I had in my hand into his throat. He bled out before I could get to him.”

 

Anakin flicked a look at the closed door, judging the distance. 

 

“I tell you this so you believe me when I say that if I thought you were a danger, if I thought you any more capable of going to the Dark Side than any other Jedi, I would not hesitate to take action.”

 

Anakin blinked, surprised. It was probably the most comforting thing she could have said. 

 

“You’re really good at this,” he blurted, then winced.  

 

She smiled. “If I could give you some advice, it would only be this: do not love less, for that is a task that no-one could manage. Merely understand that you too are loved. If you can trust in that, then I think you will find your own balance within the Force. Which is all any of us should hope for, I think.”

 

==//==\\\==

 

The Chancellor had offered to send a replacement to continue the talks but Padmé had been… well, not happy, but prepared to stay until she had at least made sure that the Kantin High Council had heard all she had to say. The offer had puzzled her somewhat, and her first thought had been that it was something to do with Anakin’s return, but not even Anakin’s favour with Palpatine extended to changing personnel to suit his wishes. She meant to mention it to Anakin when she saw him, but she had been a little distracted by how very unwell he looked. Even Moteé, who had not a maternal bone in her body, had offered to bring him his favorite  _ mishi  _ soup from a vendor some two levels down. 

 

She’d become accustomed to sharing the miseries of the war with him: her small victories and larger losses within the Senate, his horrors from the battlefield. She suspected he edited more than her, but they soothed each other’s hurts as best they could. 

 

Now though, he had arrived two days before her and he looked as if he had crawled straight from the front lines on no sleep for a week. He was restless in a way she had rarely seen before, except perhaps after his mother had died. She was half afraid to ask.

 

He lay across the length of the sofa with his head in her lap, his hand tucked under the back of her robes so he could draw mindless shapes on the bare skin of her back. He looked as if he could think of nowhere else he would rather be. He told her a little of what had happened on Goros, though she knew he was being circumspect about the exact reasons he had been sent there in the first place, and a little of the strain of the bond between he and Obi-Wan. She had been aware that Anakin and Obi-Wan shared a sort of shared sense, but she had assumed that it was an extension of the sense of each other that all Jedi seemed to have, rather than a discreet faculty of its own. She thought perhaps that the psychic bond between Obi-Wan and her husband might have come up earlier in conversation, but Anakin was useless at explaining any of his Jedi talents. When asked, he generally lapsed into the kind of poetry that Padmé associated with her younger years: dark darkness and things that were limned with light and feeling. Not that she had ever mentioned the likeness out loud, of course. 

 

As he eventually ran out of words, she found herself wondering how many more times she would have to face the possibility of his death and leaned over to kiss his forehead. 

 

“You OK?” he asked.

 

“I was just thinking,” she replied. 

 

“About what?”

 

“About the Lake House on Naboo. I would like to go back, when all this is over.”  

 

He turned onto his back so he could look up at her, but didn’t reply. 

 

“Obi-Wan would be welcome as well,” she added. 

 

“ _ Obi-Wan?” _

 

“Yes, would you not miss him if we went without him?”

 

Ani shifted around until once again he had his head mostly buried in her lap. 

 

“I guess,” he admitted. 

 

She smiled at his sullen agreement.

 

They ate a small dinner then retired for bed. Unusually for Anakin, he kissed her sweetly once and then pulled her close and settled down to sleep. She wasn’t surprised considering how tired he had been all evening, and she slipped easily into sleep herself, warm in her husband’s arms. 

 

She awoke disorientated, sure she had only closed her eyes for a second. She looked over at the cronometer and saw that it was the very early hours of the morning and she had only been asleep for a little over two hours. She turned back towards Anakin, but as she closed her eyes he jerked violently. Her heart tripped at the movement, but after a couple for seconds nothing further happened so she closed her eyes. Again, Anakin jerked, hard enough to pull the sheets off her. She sat up and looked over to Anakin: in the low light she could just make out his eyes moving under his eyelids and the thin sheen of sweat that  shone on his forehead.

 

“Ani?” she said, hoping to pull him out of whatever dark place his mind had taken him. 

 

“Anakin?” she tried again, a little louder. 

 

He often had nightmares and had warned her early on not to touch him during one, but he was a light sleeper so it had always been easy to call him back to her before. 

 

She risked a hand on his shoulder, so she was touching him when he made yet another jerking motion, as if he was attempting to pull himself out of his own nightmare. 

 

She shook him, “Ani!” 

 

Padmé stared at him for a moment, heart racing, hoping that it was something that would resolve itself, but sure enough after a tense minute he jolted again.

 

She lay a hand in his hair, sure it would make no difference but needing to offer some comfort to him anyway. After a moment she took up her comm and put a call through, carding her fingers through Ani’s hair as she chewed on her lips. The call connected and the voice that answered was more awake than she would have expected at this hour. 

 

She explained as best she could, but then there was nothing to do but wait. 

 

Thirty minutes passed with no change. She was just debating calling through to Garard, her head of security, to see if he could wake Anakin, when Moteé came into her bed chambers, Obi-Wan on her heels. 

 

He looked cleaner than when she had last saw him, but that was about all she could say in his favour - it was obvious Anakin was not the only one struggling. Moteé glanced at Padmé, then nodded as she saw it was not necessary for her to stay. 

 

Obi-Wan walked round the bed to Anakin, not even glancing at Padmé.

 

“Don’t wake him,” she said, just was Obi-Wan was reaching forward to do exactly that.

 

“Forgive me, Senator, but I assumed that was what you called me here for in the middle of the night.”

 

Everything had been coloured with what she had seen when Obi-Wan had thought he may have lost Anakin, and so his less than pleased tone didn’t even register with her. She had no doubt he had been sleeping as well as Ani had without him by his side.

 

“If you wake him, he will be mortified and angry, and other adjectives that are not conductive to a good night’s sleep. He is exhausted, you are exhausted, and I have a meeting at first light. Waking him would not do any of us any good.”

 

“Then what do you suggest?”

 

“Get in.”

 

Obi-Wan blinked at her, which was a sure sign she had shocked him.

 

Padmé resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “If it’s inappropriate to have a single Jedi Knight in my bed then I don't see how  _ two _ would be any more inappropriate. Your virtue is quite safe, I assure you,” she added, with a small smile. 

 

Obi-Wan looked down at Anakin who looked peaceful once more. He then pulled off his boots, folded his outer robe over a nearby chair and got in the other side of the bed, Anakin between them. 

 

She got herself comfortable again then reached out to brush a little of Anakin’s hair from his forehead. He said something indistinct, turning so he was on his back. 

 

“Lights to minimum,” she murmured, and slept.

 

==//==\\\==

  
  


As the sun started to warm the horizon, Anakin gradually came back to awareness, comfortable in a way he rarely felt when awakening lately.  He was not in his own apartment, that much was certain, as even half asleep he could feel the sense of the space of the room he was in. He blinked a few times in the low, artificial light, aware in some animal part of his mind that it was not quite dawn yet. Obi-Wan’s sharp features came into focus, and Anakin stared at his bed-head which was glorious in its disarray and wondered why he felt it was so odd to be seeing it. They’d been sleeping in the same bed often enough recently. Too much, perhaps. Despite Healer Navkin’s kind words, he still worried at the openness between them and what would happen once Obi-Wan found out that the whole sorry mess with the bond was because he couldn’t keep his own emotions well enough under control. He hoped that was not a fact that the Healers had shared with Obi-Wan, who’d had his own appointment with them to keep. 

 

Eventually reality started to filter in and with it the realisation that he and Obi-Wan weren’t the only ones in the bed. He threw himself around to see Padmé sitting up next to him, frowning down at a flimsi she was reading. 

 

He gaped at her for a moment. 

 

“You were thrashing around in your sleep with nightmares and I could neither wake you or calm you, so I comm’d Obi-Wan,” she said, without looking up. 

 

Anakin just continued to be horrified. 

 

She sighed and put the flimsi to one side, pushing herself back down the bed until she was lying down facing him. 

 

“You love him and he loves you, I understand that such feelings are frowned upon by the Jedi, but I won’t apologise for asking him to help you when I could see you were suffering.” 

 

He desperately hoped that Obi-Wan really  _ was _ asleep behind him. 

 

“Now, I must get up,” she added.

 

She leant forward and kissed him briefly before rolling out of bed, her nightgown trailing behind her.

 

Anakin rolled back over to contemplate Obi-Wan’s still form. After a moment he reached out and put his hand over Obi-Wan’s where it lay on his chest. 

 

Obi-Wan threaded their fingers together and they lay like that, silent, until Padmé returned to throw them out of her rooms.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that was slow. Next one will be quicker ^^

 

The journey to their rooms was silent. Anakin was expanding a great deal of energy on not letting his embarrassment seep into the Force, to the point where he almost jumped out of his skin when Obi-Wan finally spoke.

 

“I have a meeting with the Council this morning, but will you be available later?”

 

Anakin nodded, then realised that Obi-Wan wasn’t even looking at him.

 

“Yes,” he said to Obi-Wan’s back as he headed towards the door, then he was gone.

 

Anakin let himself fall backwards, controlling his descent with the Force until he was lying spreadeagled in the middle of the living room. The uneven white of the ceiling was familiar to him, and he allowed himself thirty minutes to lie there and go through all his failings as a Jedi, friend, and human being before making himself sit up.

 

To meditate, to release his tangled knot of emotions into the Force would most likely alert Obi-Wan that he had such emotions, so he bound them tightly and went to the training rooms. He purposefully folded his arms lightly behind him as he walked at a slow pace, stopping to greet individual Jedi with all the politeness he could muster. He _could_ live up to his reputation, to the demands that Obi-Wan put on him: he would just have to try harder.

 

When he emerged from the training rooms sometime later he wished he’d been thinking clearly enough to bring a clean set of robes with him. His own were soaked through with sweat and he probably stank to high heaven. Their shared rooms were still empty when he arrived back though, and it was that emptiness that he concentrated his mind on as he showered. He tried for the umteemth time since Healer Navkin had told him that he was responsible for the sensitivity of the Force bond to close himself to Obi-Wan, the way he had been taught. He gave up after only a few minutes this time, not in the mood to add further disappointments to his performance over the last 48 hours.

 

He felt Obi-Wan arrive, his conflicted emotions making it clear that all was not well between them after last night.

 

Anakin dressed slowly and went and joined him in the main room, but when he sat down, Obi-Wan remained quiet.

 

“Obi-Wan, about last night…” he started, no clue what excuse he was going to use, but Obi-Wan held up a hand to stop him.

 

“The Council have decreed that I am to go to Utapau, the Supreme Councillor has passed on intelligence to suggest that Grievous is there. I am to leave immediately.”

 

Still, Obi-Wan didn’t look at him.

 

Anakin felt the edge of a great precipice before him: like the freefall when he jumped, before the Force caught him.

 

“No, you cannot go,” he said, surprising even himself with his vehemence.

 

Obi-Wan finally looked up then, and Anakin realised that the conflict Obi-Wan felt had nothing to do with their closeness, with last night, but was caused solely by the orders he’d been given. Hope, bright and alive, leapt in Anakin.

 

“Come with me, Master,” Anakin leant forward in his eagerness to make Obi-Wan see, “come back to Goros with me.”

 

“To Goros?”

 

“Yes, we can both take ourselves out of the Force. Then we will be better be able to see the Sith’s plans. I know it’s wrong but if we come back with proof the Council will forgive us. I know they will.”

 

Obi-Wan started at him, his hands unmoving in his lap and his turmoil loud in the Force. Anakin felt the terrible guilt that rose up in Obi-Wan, and he braced himself for the refusal he knew was coming.

 

“Alright,” Obi-wan said, “we will go back to Goros.”

 

Anakin leant forward, almost sick with relief. He felt Obi-Wan put his hand briefly on his head. It felt like a benediction, like he had been granted a stay of execution.

 

They quickly agreed that they owed it to Cody and by association, Rex, to let him know that Obi-Wan would not be heading to Utapau as planned. Cody took the news that his General would be disappearing in direct contradiction of the Council’s orders with seeming equanimity, though he insisted on accompanying them with a small number of clones.

 

Now a decision had been made, every conversation that they were avoiding crowded at him, and Anakin had resigned himself to awkward silences and an unstable Force bond for the four days it would take to get to Goros. Five, now that he thought about it, as they would not be using their Jedi privileges to navigate the faster hyperspace lanes.

 

“What ship will we take?” Anakin asked, as he lay on Obi-Wan’s bed while Obi-Wan tried to pack around him. Obi-Wan kept putting in his most hideous brown robes and Anakin kept taking them out again when his back was turned.

 

“I have a ship we can use.”

 

“ _You_ have a ship?”

 

Obi-Wan folded his brown robes once again and, with a significant look at Anakin, took out all his other items before putting them right at the bottom of the bag and repacking it.

 

“I know someone who has a ship which we can borrow,” Obi-Wan clarified.

 

“We’re stealing a ship, aren’t we?”

 

Obi-Wan’s flash of amusement through the Force was enough to confirm it, but then he was once again a mix of guilt and other, troubled emotions that boiled up and subsided again too fast for Anakin to identify. It was easy to forget in the familiar preparations for a mission what they were planning to do, to forget when it might cost them. Anakin was also carefully not thinking about what Padmé had said, about the feeling of Obi-Wan’s hand in his own, about what the Healer had said about their bond. He avoided all deeper thought by concentrating on packing, then on trying to fall asleep, then on acting at least somewhat normal when he awoke early with Obi-Wan asleep on the floor next to his bed, snoring softly.

 

They left the Temple through an unmanned exit, alertness thrumming between them in the Force, but shielded from the outside world. They needed even fewer words than they usually would, a flare or nudge through the bond acting where a word or glance normally would.

 

The ship turned out to be an old freighter that must have been seized by Courosant’s Outer Defense Forces at some point - it still had the seizure tags running over the main ignition sequence when Anakin started it up, but he bypassed them easily, as Obi-Wan no doubt would have known he would.

 

“I comm'd Cody the coordinates on our way down - he should be here shortly,” Obi-Wan called to him from where he was removing the clamps on the landing gear, using more brute strength than finesse.

 

“You know we’re going to need that in working order at the other end?” Anakin asked, using the outer speakers rather than shouting.

 

The look Obi-Wan shot him was positively corrosive, and Anakin grinned at the fizz of positive emotions that he could feel through the Force. He thought perhaps there was no need to have a heart to heart: they had managed well so far without resorting to words. Anakin desperately wanted to keep their new-found closeness, but he was afraid of what Obi-Wan looking too deeply would reveal.

 

He noticed Obi-Wan had stopped what he was doing to frown up at Anakin through the viewport, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything on the subject as at that moment the doors flew open and Rex and Cody came into the hanger, followed by more clones than they had expected.

 

Anakin left the cockpit and exited the craft just as Rex had started to explain why both captains were there with more than twenty clones.

 

“Some even went to far as to give evidence as to why both of us had to come on this mission, General,” Cody was saying.

 

“Evidence?” Anakin asked, coming up beside Obi-Wan.

 

“What he means to say,” replied Rex, “that six of the men wrote on the bottom of the requisition notes that we were using for ballot paper. One wrote a four-sided list of your injuries from the last 12 months—” Kix shifted slightly behind Fives, “and one wrote something along the lines of, ‘remember the time general Skywalker tried to get into a cupboard instead of going out the door?’”

 

“Good reasoning,” Obi-Wan stated.

 

“Did no-one write anything about Obi-Wan?” Anakin demanded.

 

“No sir,” Rex replied, but he and Cody shared a look.

 

“What is it?” Anakin prompted, sensing a something he could mock Obi-Wan with for at least the next month.

 

“The reason for General Kenobi needing supervision is generally thought to be so obvious that there was no need to say it out loud, sir.”

 

Anakin grinned at Rex, delighted. He had deeply missed his Captain.

 

“You understand what you’re signed up for, gentlemen?” Obi-Wan asks, serious again. “We will be disobeying direct orders.”

 

“We’d rather go down with you than without you, Generals,” Cody said, and Rex and the rest of the clones murmured their agreement.

 

“Yes, well, hopefully it won’t come to that,” Obi-Wan replied.

  


==//==\\\==

  


It had been less than two weeks since Rex had last stood on this planet, sweating in the heat. He knew just as much about the specifics of the mission this time as he had last time. Kenobi and Skywalker were good Jedi, but even when clones were disobeying direct orders for them it hadn’t occurred to either of them to inform him or Cody _why_ there were disobeying direct orders. Rex didn’t let it bother him. Faith in his general and faith in his brothers had carried him so far, he had to believe that it would get them through. The boys had grumbled a little. Not at the job, but at the secrecy. Rex had only had to remind them of how many they’d lost in the last engagement for them to shut up.

 

Jinx, Commander of the squad he’d been working with on Arund-6, had told him a little about the planet’s history  while they’d waited, freezing cold, for a battalion of droids to reach their position. Some thousand years ago there had been a war. Or, another war, he should say. Jinx couldn’t remember what it had been over, but that hadn’t been the point anyway. The ruler of the largest landmass had been outmatched in terms of technology, but his army had sheer numbers on his side. His basic tactic had been to throw so many people in the path of the oncoming tanks that they’d been unable to make any progress, their great wheels gummed up with the dead and dying of their enemies.

 

Jinx had been making a point, of course, but it hadn’t been one that Rex was inclined to listen to.

 

He was mostly trying to distract himself from the brothers they’d left behind when they’d gone AWOL with two of the most famous Jedi in existence. He and Cody had discussed it though, and if anyone had a chance of ending this war it was Kenobi and Skywalker. This was the best course of action for the rest of their men, even if it meant leaving them in the short term.

 

It was hard though, knowing that no matter how understanding the Jedi in charge of them, they would not be mourned the way they should be. Not that they ever had time to really do the things he’d seen on holovids: the wailing and the tearing of clothes, or wrapping the bones or body in silk and settling them into the ground. The most the clones got was a roll call of the dead at the end of a mission. He knew that Cody kept a list of all his dead on a flimsi at the bottom of his kitbag. Cody had added twelve names to that list at the end of their last mission, and Rex had lost six: Syn, Four, Neve, Duo and Holt. Syn had died right in front of him in a hot spray of blood and bone as he’d taken a blaster bolt to the head.

 

Rex looked into the distant trees, where Skywalker and Kenobi had disappeared, Skywalker listing a little from his still healing leg. Their footprints had filled in quickly, the brown-red earth of the planet falling back into the marks they’d made, erasing any sign of them. Rex wondered how someone even went about digging a grave. They had auto shovels on the freighter, he was sure he’d seen them in the inventory that Koho had written up. It would be fast enough work with the shovels automatically adjusting for the weight of the soil on them. Rex did some quick maths and came to the conclusion that they could dig 18 graves in six hours. But what about the others, those who had died before the last mission? Rex wasn’t actually sure how many clones he’d lost from the 212th all together. He could ask Cody, he bet Cody would know. Too many for this clearing though. Even if they used the thrusters in atmosphere to clear an acre or so of forest, there would not be enough space for all their dead brothers.

 

He knelt and pushed his fingers into the mud, which drew at his fingers as if to pull him down.

 

“Captain?”

 

He turned, startled, to find Kix frowning down at him. He stood hastily and wiped his hands.

 

“Did you not hear the chime for the shift change, Captain?” Kix asked, oddly formal.

 

“No I—,” Rex looked back out at the forest, “it’s nothing.”

 

He started back to the ship, clapping Kix on the shoulder as he drew level with him.

 

He made himself keep his eyes forward.

  


==//==\\\==

  


The caves seemed darker than Obi-Wan remembered them being: the spaces they walked seemed narrower and the lack of the Force more encompassing. When they reached the site of the cave-in the struts the construction droids had put up looked very temporary to Obi-Wan’s eyes, though Anakin assured him that they were perfectly sound. He added something under his breath that Obi-Wan didn’t catch, but sounded suspiciously like ‘for the next few hours, at least’.

 

Obi-Wan gave into the urge to put a hand on Anakin’s shoulder as they made their way unsteadily over the cascade of rocks the littered the floor. Anakin had said that there were rooms further in, some with still functioning emergency lighting and brackish water in the pipes. There was no reaction from Anakin to Obi-Wan’s familiarity, and Obi-Wan could not help but think that perhaps Anakin was grateful for the unavoidable severance of their bond that the caves caused: that he was enjoying the privacy that had been lost to them for the last two weeks. Obi-Wan didn’t blame him in that case, though he was not sure how to confess that it was his fault that the Force had been acting so strangely between them, that his own weakness had resulted in the sundering of boundaries between them. A small, cowardly part of Obi-Wan hoped that Anakin already knew, that the Healer had informed him of the cause of their problems when Anakin had had his own meeting.

 

Soon though there was nothing to do but wait, although Anakin seemed to find plenty to keep him busy. He insisted on disconnecting the emergency lights in the other rooms so that the light in their own stopped flickering quite so enthusiastically. Once that task was complete he fiddled with the pipes for close to two hours, swearing to himself softly in a variety of languages as he did so.

 

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan finally said, when he started making suggestions that one of them go check the inner rooms for more comfortable beds, “you have already spent several hours fixing everything in this room, so perhaps we should enjoy the fruit of your labours for a little while before you move onto the next?”

 

Anakin slumped onto the opposite bed in response, he lay down then propped himself upright, finally leaning forward on the bed.

 

“Master, the bond—it’s me, I’m the one who has lost control of it,” he said in a rush, picking at a lose thread in his robes instead of looking up.

 

Obi-Wan opened his mouth then closed it, astonished.

 

“Anakin, who did you speak to in the Halls of Healing?” he asked.

 

Anakin looked up at that, “Healer Navkin.”

 

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes, and Anakin shifted a little on the bed. “She told me the same thing.”

 

“She what?  Why would she do that?” Anakin asked.

 

“To provoke this exact conversation, I imagine.” Anakin blinked at that, surprised.

 

“Is it, is it so terrible? The strength of the bond?” Anakin asked after a moment, something naked in his voice. Perhaps it was better that they were speaking of this now, where Force-blindness gave them privacy they would not have otherwise had.

 

“No,” Obi-Wan offered Anakin a reassuring smile, “it is not so bad.”

 

Anakin smiled back after a moment, then got to his feet and announced that Obi-Wan should help him find better blankets. Obi-Wan stood up reluctantly, but followed Anakin further into the dark.

 

/==\

 

When he awoke some four hours later, Anakin had somehow wormed his way into the tiny space between Obi-Wan and the wall, so that he was sleeping with his cheek against the crumbling plaster. It looked incredibly uncomfortable.

 

Obi-Wan moved back the scant few centimeters he had available to him then eased Anakin back a little, so that he had more room to breathe. Anakin rolled over onto his front, then seemed to rouse a little before letting himself slump down again.

 

“I’m sorry,” Anakin said, slightly muffled by the way he was lying.

 

“Whatever are you sorry for?” Obi-Wan asked softly.

 

“This,” Anakin flailed the arm he wasn’t lying on to indicate the room or the bed, Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what, “not looking before I leap; breaking my leg; invading your privacy; not even…” he swallowed, they hadn’t spoken of this, “not even being able to sleep alone.”

 

“You think that I do this only for your sake?” Obi-wan asked, quietly.

 

Anakin turned to look at him then, so torn open that Obi-Wan didn’t need their bond to see his agony. Obi-Wan had always turned away from him at times like this, not in disgust of course, but out of respect. When Obi-Wan struggled with their orders, with the deaths they witnessed, the deaths they _caused_ , Anakin had always afforded him what little privacy he could so that Obi-Wan would have time to rebuild his resolve. Obi-Wan would have liked to give Anakin that same space, that same dignity, but for once there was nowhere to go.

 

He reached out and put a hand to Anakin’s face, hoping that his understanding would be just as welcome as his touch, but almost pulled back when Anakin curled into himself and sobbed once, before going still.

 

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan tried, unable to tell if Anakin wanted comfort or to be left alone. He would have given anything to be able to comfort him, to put his arms around him, but Anakin was so wary of comfort and Obi-Wan would rather break his own arm than reach out to Anakin when he wasn’t wanted.

 

Anakin curled further forward in response, and Obi-Wan took that as permission. A part of him was glad, he was not sure he’d have been able to leave Anakin like this even if he’d wanted him to. Obi-Wan tucked Anakin under his chin, holding him as best as he was able. Apart from that initial cry, he had gone silent, and merely lay trembling as Obi-Wan tried to offer solace without infringing too deeply on Anakin’s boundaries. He settled for stroking Anakin’s ridiculously long hair back, something that he hadn’t done for many many years.

 

“Obi-Wan?” Anakin asked, finally, sounding very young.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Will you love me no matter what?”

 

Obi-Wan stilled. He had heard Padmé give voice to that forbidden truth, but he’d thought they were simply adding it to the multitude of things that they never discussed.

 

“Yes,” he said finally, proud that his voice shook only a little, “I will love you no matter what.”

 

“I did something terrible,” Anakin confessed into the warm space between them. “I murdered the raiders who killed my mother, I murdered their loved ones—their children.” He took a ragged breath, “I want to say that if I could go back, that I would undo it all, but I don’t know that Obi-Wan: _I don’t know_.”

 

Shock, and horror, and for once he was glad at the lack of the Force, glad that Anakin could not sense his first response. He would grieve for those people later. He would offer up his feelings to the Force, and let it cleanse him of his guilt that he had let this wound fester in Anakin, that he hadn’t been there to support him.

 

“I still love you,” he said, and Anakin did cry then, for a long time.

 

/==\

 

Some people looked up at the stars and saw vastness, or they looked at the bright stream of hyperspace and felt they had touched the limits of the universe. But nothing could compare to the arc of the Force, towering above and below and through all things. A cradle and a challenge, a question and an answer, it was all this and more, and yet it was impossible to describe to anyone who had not experienced it. It was what Obi-Wan felt when they came out of the caves: the hot light of the Force flowing through and around him.  He could see the darkness that had crept out from the evils of the war and had grown, vine-like, until the Force was tangled with ill-intent. It was indistinct though, hovering and uncertain - nothing like the clarity that Anakin had described to him. Anakin, who had gripped Obi-Wan with bruising Force, shared his perception of the Force through their bond. Through him Obi-Wan saw the interconnectedness that Anakin had tried to describe to the Council, and he saw the rot that extended all the way back to Coruscant, maybe even to the Jedi themselves.

 

Anakin staggered a little, but rallied quickly and brought his hand up to his comm.

 

“What is it?” Obi-Wan asked, forcing himself to think beyond the dread, but whoever Anakin was contacting had already answered.

 

“Moteé, would you get Padmé please? It’s urgent.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is interested I'm taking part in [Fandom Trumps Hate](https://fth2019offerings.dreamwidth.org/86943.html) this year (in any fandom) - all monies going to good causes.


	5. Chapter 5

 

"So not only did Padmé agree to drop everything and meet you halfway across the galaxy, she agreed to go into hiding? _Padmé Amidala_ agreed to go into hiding?"

 

Sometimes Anakin regretted the fact that Obi-Wan knew Padmé so well. He would have been equally sceptical if someone had suggested his wife would willingly run rather than stand and fight. However, Obi-Wan didn't have all the facts, and, although he was reasonably sure that Obi-Wan would be forgiving, Anakin did not feel like pushing the limits of Obi-Wan's tolerance right now by sharing said facts.

 

"We'll rendezvous with her here," he said, ignoring Obi-Wan's question and pointing to a fueling station of questionable legitimacy on the edge of the Colonies.

 

"And where will we be dropping her off?" Obi-Wan asked, his accent sharp with scepticism.

 

"Here," Anakin said, indicating a planet in the outer rim.

 

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said, "that's on the other side of the galaxy."

 

"We'll use the trade route—I can rig the ship ID to give out the right permissions for us to go unnoticed—we can be there and back to the Temple in under 72 hours."

 

"It'd be quicker if we used our Jedi hyperspace access," Obi-Wan commented.

 

"You really think the Council will just let us cruise past Coruscant once they know where we are?"

 

"No," Obi-Wan said, shortly. "I can't imagine they're going to be in a hurry to let us go anywhere for a very long time."

 

They were back on the freighter, the _Nuria_ , which Anakin was starting to think had been condemned before Obi-Wan decided to relieve its original owner of it. It rattled alarmingly whenever they entered or exited hyperspace, and the ship ID was of a type Anakin hadn't seen since he'd been slaved to a scrap yard on Tatooine. He'd spent the first cycle of their journey back towards the centre of the galaxy fruitlessly trying to follow old leads he'd been collecting for Ashoka. She was strong with the Force, she always had been, and he hoped she had some idea of what was to come because he'd had no luck warning her himself. He was also ignoring the low-grade panic that Padmé's quiet confession had caused him. He would be more anxious about it if it weren't for the Sith apparently operating from somewhere on Coruscant in plain sight. One thing at a time, Obi-Wan always said when his mind had raced ahead of him as a Padawan.

 

Get Padmé away from Coruscant, convince the Council that a Sith walked among them, inform Obi-Wan of his two-year marriage and the fact that he was about to become a father.

 

Anakin sighed, causing alarm to flare between him and Obi-Wan in the Force. Despite their realisation that they were both causing the continued openness of the bond, neither had been able to get much further in rebuilding their shields. Anakin wasn't sure if their continued physical closeness was helping matters or not, but he wasn't about to suggest putting an end to it. He was still reeling from Obi-Wan's apparent forgiveness of the carnage on Tatooine.

 

"Did you talk to Rex?" Obi-Wan asked. Anakin was grateful of course for the fact that Obi-Wan was letting him keep his secrets, but he had to fight against the small voice that told him that he just didn't care enough to push for answers.

 

"Yes," he replied, pulling himself back to the present. "I updated them while you were arranging enough supplies for a whole battalion. Just how much tea do you think the clones drink?"

 

Obi-Wan sniffed, a haughty sound of dismissal that Anakin had never been able to replicate. The last time he'd tried he'd snorted up something foul and had had to leave the room while Obi-Wan pretended he wasn't laughing at him.

 

"You had better start on stripping the ship of its ID tags."

 

"Yes, Master," Anakin replied, his mind racing ahead to the alterations he'd have to make to get them into Gu'al space and out again, to the planet he planned to hide his wife, his _pregnant_ wife.

 

In the end Obi-Wan was right to push him to start, the ship had not one but two layers of fake ID tags that Anakin had to strip before he could work on adding his own to the system. It was no wonder whoever had owned the ship before had been caught, the logs would have only stood up to the most basic of scans before it became clear that something was amiss. In the process he discovered that the in-atmosphere secondary exhaust system had been miswired slightly. It was the kind of error that would reveal itself when the system was most needed, so Anakin was deep within the interior engines when Obi-Wan came looking for him. He turned up just at the moment that Anakin had caught himself on the edge of an exposed casing, and was dripping blood all over himself as he tried to find something to staunch it with.

 

"Anakin, what are you doing?" Oi-Wan asked, crouching down so he was at eye-level.

 

"Bleeding," Anakin replied, most of his attention on trying to retrieve the rag that he was pretty sure he was lying on.

 

"Yes, I can see that. I meant in a more general sense."

 

A spotless handkerchief landed directly on his chest.

 

"Making sure we don't blow up mid-air if we use our secondary exhaust," Anakin said, wrapping the now red-streaked handkerchief around his hand.

 

"Anakin, it's past 1am ship time. You've been down here for six hours. Did you even stop to eat?"

 

Instead of answering, Anakin pulled himself into a sitting position, thick cabling blocking Obi-Wan half from view as he did so.

 

"Padmé's pregnant," he announced, concentrating hard on the throb of the cut on his hand.

 

"She's what?"

 

"And we're married," Anakin added with fatalistic honesty.

 

Hurt flared through the bond and Anakin swallowed hard.

 

"You're disappointed in me," Anakin observed, as there was no way to hide from Obi-Wan's reaction.

 

Obi-Wan shook his head and folded himself into his familiar cross-legged sitting position. For a moment Anakin wished with all his being that he was young again, that he could settle in Obi-Wan's lap for the purity of the comfort he had provided.

 

"Not for the reasons you are thinking."

 

"Why then?"

 

"Because—because I could not have been able to stand it if you had left the Jedi. If you do leave the Jedi."

 

Obi-Wan stopped, but Anakin held his breath, sensing that there was more to his confession.

 

"I could not stand for you to leave me."

 

Anakin wished he hadn't chosen the cowardly option of being beyond physical reach for this conversation, knowing how much Obi-Wan's words had cost him to admit.

 

"Is that why she agreed to go into hiding?" Obi-Wan added, as Anakin struggled for something to say.

 

Anakin nodded. "You were right - she’d have never done so otherwise."

 

"Yes, she would have hunted down the Sith herself and hauled him across hot coals for daring to set up on Coruscant."

 

They shared their fondness for her fearlessness through the bond for a moment.

 

"Come on, up with you," Obi-Wan said, skillfully winding a hand through the cabling to pull him upright. "We will not be needing our secondary systems for some hours at least, and I would like to hear if there any holos of the wedding in existence."

 

==//==\\\==

 

Padmé had known in vague terms that Anakin and Obi-Wan were up to something outside the realm of even their usual high-risk behaviour. Anakin's last message to her would have confirmed it, even without his terrible nightmares and Obi-Wan's haggard visage.

 

_"I'm going to do something that might seem extreme from the outside, but I promise it's for a good cause. I love you._

 

_P.S. Don't worry, Obi-Wan is going with me."_

 

Seeing as she had once overheard Cody reference a mission where Obi-Wan had _thrown_ Anakin out of a ship so that he could continue fighting, she wasn't sure why he would think that Obi-Wan's company was any less worrying that the lack of it. Regardless, she had been somewhat braced for the comm from Anakin when Moteé had put it through to her, though not for the request he had made. Perhaps if she had not just learnt of the one in a million failure of her yearly contraceptive she might not have agreed—she would never have agreed, in fact. Even now she was regretting her decision, which had been fueled by Anakin's urgency and her own, newly-born fears.

 

Twins, she shook her head to herself as the lights of hyperspace lights streamed by. It had never occurred to her to consider termination. The second the droid had informed her of the cause of her nausea she had felt a fierce longing to meet her children, to meet Ani's children. He had so much love to give, and a protectiveness that rivalled her own. Her children would be safe and loved, of that she had no doubt.

 

It shouldn't have worked between them: Anakin had been in love with the girl she had been and had not had the time to relearn her before they were married. Sabé had thought he was in love with the idea of her—that he had put her on a pedestal as the perfect partner—but Padmé knew that that was not how Anakin loved. He was too intelligent, too genuinely insightful to love a ghost: it was simply that he loved her, all of her. Her stubbornness and honesty, her pragmatism and her whimsy. He had seen her despair and hate, and he had never given her reason to doubt that he would love any facet of herself that she revealed to him. Padmé had no illusions about herself: she knew to the exact millimetre what she would sacrifice and for what cause. A prisoner at 14, she had never had any choice but to know that she could kill another in cold blood and sleep easy afterwards. And Anakin loved all of her, equally. If she said to him that perhaps he should have some preference towards her softer side, he would be honestly confused at the suggestion.

 

As she met them both at the prearranged rendezvous, she reflected that perhaps she had done Anakin a disservice by not talking to him explicitly about his relationship with Obi-Wan. They moved in each other's space in a way that they had previously been too... too Jedi to do, Obi-Wan's hand on the small of Anakin's back as they make their way through the crowded streets to a beaten-up freighter, Anakin's hand in her own. It had taken only one look from him for her to know that he had finally confessed all to Obi-Wan.

 

She had brought only Moteé and Garad, her head of Security, as a retinue, and they trailed behind her at a respectful distance. They were the only two who never underestimated or, worse, overestimated the skills of the two Jedi she walked with. She had also been thinking of Garad's own young children when she asked him to accompany her, though she had not shared her news with him yet. She imagined he would not have been quite so sanguine about her escaping to the edges of space with two AWOL Jedi if he had known.

 

"Isn't that an X4-Series?" she asked, jolted out of her musings as they approached the docking area. "Didn't they stop producing those because they occasionally blew up in atmosphere?"

 

Anakin gazed at her lovingly, most likely as delighted by her presence as he was by her general knowledge.

 

"Anakin fixed it," Obi-Wan told her, turning his polite smile on her. They would have to work on being friends again if he and Anakin were headed they way they seemed to be.

 

She was surprised at the number of clones who nodded hello as they made their way to the cockpit. There had been no hint from the Jedi or the Holonet that two of their most famous Jedi had disappeared with what looked like half a troop of clones. It made her briefly wonder what else the Jedi Council had managed to keep to themselves. She sat down and strapped herself in, accepting a brief kiss from Anakin who slanted his eyes to Obi-Wan as he did so. She gripped his hand, reassuringly.

 

There was no line about loving one and no other in Naboo wedding vows, and watching Anakin and Obi-Wan act with perfect synchronicity as they took the freighter out of atmosphere made her proud of her cultural heritage. The idea that love could be limited or controlled was taboo to her, which was most likely a factor in her unease around the restrictions she sometimes felt the Jedi had placed on Anakin. She had thought he'd understood at the time that they had not sworn to love only each other, but she resolved to make sure it was explicitly clear. Although, her first priority was to get a full report from Anakin and Obi-Wan, and then convince them that she was perfectly capable of facing this Sith at their side. Pregnant or not, she had not gone into politics so that she could idly sit by at the first sign of danger.

 

Anakin had assured her it would be a quick hop to their destination using Gu'al trading routes, but apparently they had not yet ironed out all the details. Once they were free of atmosphere Anakin and Obi-Wan instantly fell into what felt like an older debate.

 

"How about…?" Anakin started to ask before Obi-Wan cut him off.

 

"No," he said, without even looking around.

 

"Fine," Anakin huffed, sounding anything but. "Do you have any better ideas?"

 

Obi-Wan turned in his chair and raised an eyebrow at him.

 

"What? No!" Anakin replied.

 

Back on Naboo Padmé'd had an artist friend who was obsessed with avant-garde theatre. The one show she had been dragged to had looked something like this conversation.

 

"Is there a problem?" she asked.

 

"No," they said in perfect unison.

 

"Well then, I am going to stow my belongings," she announced and got up to do exactly that.

 

//==\\\

 

"You get yourselves comfortable, Senator," Rex was saying, while Cody watched Anakin inspect their supplies for the fourteenth time. "General Skywalker is just having a last minute panic about the landing party and then we'll be on our way."

 

Padmé smiled in reply, a little distracted by the view of the planet suspended below them in space. She couldn't quite believe she'd agreed to this, even for the few days she'd bargained Anakin down to. Bail was going to kill her.

 

They had made the journey in a little under thirty hours, speeding past checkpoints without any problems. Obi-Wan had seemed determined to give her and Anakin some space, which she was grateful for as she was still processing Anakin's warning and the new life that was growing within her. She was determined to speak to Obi-Wan before he left with Anakin to go back to explain themselves to the Council though.

 

She half turned to say something to Rex but was caught by the look on Cody's face, or rather the sudden lack of any look. He had his hand on his blaster, she noticed. Then three things happened very quickly: Rex seemed to waver, almost falling; Anakin and Obi-Wan stepped to his side, concern on their faces; and Moteé grabbed Cody's arm as he started to unholster his blaster.

 

Cody casually backhanded Moteé hard enough to send her crashing into the wall, then he was turning towards Anakin, whose attention was on Rex.

 

Padmé went for her own blaster— _too slow_ —as Cody aimed at Anakin, who looked up at him with shock. He might have said something, but Padmé could hear nothing over the rushing of her heartbeat in her ears. Garad pushed her roughly to the side, reaching for Cody. An arc of blood flicked across her face, stinging where it landed in her eye.

 

Garad fell, the force of Cody's blast spinning him in a full circle before he hit the floor, echoed by another blast as Moteé shot Cody from behind. Cody fell forward rather than back, crumpling to the floor next to Rex, whose face was a rictus of some great emotion: pain or grief or anger, she couldn't tell.

 

Time had sped up in a way it was wont to do in times of great danger, but it also slowed impossibly, so she could see the expression of the clones’ faces as they came down the corridor, some of them in uniform, some dressed as if they had risen suddenly from sleep.  They walked at first, then started to jog. She had always found it difficult to tell them apart, despite her best efforts. She could not believe, seeing them now, that she had ever thought that they were too similar. Before they had had life, expression, feeling - now she saw only blank masks on the men who had willingly followed her husband into countless hells. She saw her death in their faces.

 

"Anakin," she started, unsure if she should go to him or Garad, who lay looking up at the ceiling with staring, lifeless eyes.

 

"Go… go! I will hold them," Rex said, spitting the words out as if each one cost him a great deal to say.

 

The sound of the boots thudding down the hallway reached them and Moteé pulled Padmé back through the airlock, her left arm hanging at an unnatural angle at her side. Obi-Wan almost physically lifted Anakin from where he was still trying to reason with Rex and shoved him after them, coming through himself and activating the lock just as blaster bolts started to hit the outer rim of the entrance.

 

They tumbled into their seats, Anakin flipping switches with frantic speed as an alarm began to wail.

 

"Overriding coupling points," Obi-Wan said, his face a mask of calm.

 

"Clear," Anakin replied, and the noiseless vibration of the shuttle pulling free of its moorings shivered through her. Padmé turned in her seat, stretching for one last look at Rex as the shuttle fell into the darkness of space.

 

"Master, I can feel them dying," Anakin said, his voice tight.

 

"I know," Obi-Wan replied.

 

"The clones?" Padmé asked in dismay.

 

Obi-Wan shook his head. "No, the Jedi."

 

She looked at him in shock, unable to comprehend shift of the universe beneath her feet. In front of her, through the viewport, the jungle of Dagobah grew in size to fill the screen: lush and endless.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the epilogue to go!


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear gods, that was hard. <3 to everyone who has read, reviewed, left kudos and/or commented.

 

Leia gripped Obi-Wan’s beard with the savage strength of a Wookie, shouting ‘ _ hair! _ ’ into his face with obvious delight. Obi-Wan winced, trying to convince her that perhaps she would like to let go. When she finally released him she had a number of grey and red hairs clutched in her tiny fists, which she promptly stuffed into her mouth. Luke looked on from the bed with bright, intelligent eyes, as if taking notes for how to cause future chaos. 

 

Obi-Wan put her down next to her brother and, using a subtle manipulation of the Force, he created a barrier to stop them from climbing off the bed. He still made sure to turn his back for only a moment to pick up his comm, which was bleeping incessantly. If it came down to a contest between Leia’s stubborn curiosity and the ancient power of the Force, he was honestly not sure which would emerge victorious. 

 

He answered with a distracted,  _ Obi-Wan _ , to be informed by someone in communications that Anakin and Ahsoka had returned. He thanked the messenger, hoping that at least one of them would be heading to relieve him of guard duty. Padmé had accompanied Bail to the Outer Rim, and was due back later that day. 

 

Half an hour later, both Anakin and Ahsoka arrived. Luke instantly began to cry, no doubt picking up on the turbulent emotions of his father, who wore a scowl to match what Obi-Wan could sense through their bond.

 

“I’ll take the twins,” Ahsoka announced, giving Obi-Wan a meaningful look over Anakin’s shoulder. Well, the mission had obviously gone about as well to be expected. Fighting clones was always unpleasant, but there had been a face to face portion of their plan that was most likely the cause of Anakin’s rolling anger and guilt. 

 

Luke calmed down once he had been kissed by his father, and Leia tugged at Anakin’s hair when it was her turn to be greeted. Ahsoka took them with her to her rooms, leaving Anakin and Obi-Wan alone. 

 

Obi-Wan put his hands on Anakin’s shoulders, keeping them there despite all outward signs that his touch was not welcome. It had taken them a long time, but Obi-Wan now understood that he did more harm than good when he rationed his physical comfort according to what Anakin seemed to be receptive to. Much better to wait until he was physically shrugged off than to feed into Anakin’s deep-seated fear of abandonment. 

 

Once Anakin began to relax a little, Obi-Wan pulled him back into his arms. Anakin went unresisting, and Obi-Wan felt some of his anger fade into acceptance.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said into Anakin’s shoulder. He felt him nod. 

 

Anakin turned in his arms, laying his head onto his shoulder.

 

“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” he said.

 

“Of course,” Obi-Wan said, understanding what he was asking. 

 

They raised their heads in unison, leaning into the kiss. Anakin was taller, but they were close enough in height that it wasn’t uncomfortable.

 

They undressed slowly, neither of them willing to let go long enough to remove more than one piece of clothing at a time. Anakin was breathing more quickly, eyes slightly glazed by the time they made it to their bed. He still smelled of the recycled air of hyperspace travel as Obi-Wan first licked a bead of sweat from his neck then bit down on one of his nipples. Anakin arched off the bed, digging his fingers into Obi-Wan’s hair and demanding more through their bond. Obi-Wan was only too happy to oblige, switching sides until Anakin’s chest was pink and red, and he was grinding desperately up onto Obi-Wan’s thigh. 

 

“Shall I fuck you?” Obi-Wan asked.

 

Anakin didn’t reply with words, but pulled him into a sloppy kiss, splaying his legs wider under Obi-Wan. Anakin could only ever be persuaded to have the patience needed to prepare him if Padme was present or if Obi-Wan first tied him to something, so he simply slicked himself thoroughly and went as slowly as he could. Anakin made infuriating little moans, which did nothing for Obi-Wan’s fraying self control. 

 

“Good?” he asked once he was fully seated. He was rather proud of how steady his voice was, which Anakin must have sensed as he promptly clenched down. Obi-Wan fell forward onto his forearms, biting his lip in his effort not to thrust.

 

After a moment he looked up to find Anakin smirking at him, tendrils of his long hair stuck to the base of his throat which glistened with sweat. Obi-Wan pushed one of Anakin’s legs back as far as it would go, leaning down for a kiss as he began to thrust. They found a rhythm easily. 

 

The trick, they had discovered, was less about learning what the other liked and more about not letting their shared pleasure pull an orgasm from them five minutes into fucking. Anakin, of course, had mostly decided this was a competition which could only be won by making Obi-Wan come first. He clenched down again, and Obi-Wan retaliated with another kiss, swallowing down Anakin’s moans as he increased his pace. 

 

Anakin could orgasm untouched given enough time but, despite his now infinitely better mood, Obi-Wan preferred to give him that pleasure sooner rather than later.  _ Better than meditating _ , he had jokingly said to Obi-Wan, not long after their relationship had become physical. Even Obi-Wan could admit that there was something more balanced about Anakin in the Force now. He still had a temper, but he came back to himself quicker now that he had so many people waiting for him.

 

Obi-Wan could feel his orgasm building, could feel Anakin’s echo through their bond. Despite their best efforts, it still lay wide open between them. Their best guess was that they would regain control of it when they no-longer lent quite so heavily on it to communicate, so possibly never. Obi-Wan came, gasping, pulling Anakin over the edge with him. Obi-Wan eased himself out of Anakin and tipped over onto his side. Anakin rolled over to pillow his head on Obi-Wan’s chest, and Obi-Wan put a hand on the back his neck. His hair was too tangled to run through, so he stroked the back of an ear instead.

 

“I won again,” Anakin said, eventually. 

 

Obi-Wan shook his head, fond. Less than a year ago Anakin would have hoarded his anger and guilt, would have used it to fuel his next fight. Now, less than an hour after what must have been a terrible mission, his presence in the Force was calm and accepting.  Obi-Wan had mused to Padmé that perhaps it had been less that Anakin had needed to let go of his attachments, and more that those who loved him had needed to hold him a little tighter. That Obi-Wan had needed to hold him a little tighter. She had smiled her wise smile and kissed him on the cheek without answering. 

 

Obi-Wan contemplated the thought as they roused themselves, showered and dressed. Just in time, as some ten minutes later the twins tumbled back into the room followed by an exasperated Ahsoka and a newly-returned Padmé. Obi-Wan rose to great them, forgetting his musings—caught in the tides of his family. 

 

  
  


_You do not have to be good._

_You do not have to walk on your knees_

_For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting._

_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_

_love what it loves._

 

Mary Oliver, _Wild Geese_ [excerpt]

 


End file.
